An assembly line worker suffered a serious shoulder injury when their assistive exoskeleton locked up during a twisting motion. Traditional investigation failed to explain the mechanical failure. The engineering team turned to a 3D biomechanical reconstruction, integrating the suit's accelerometer data with a laser scan of the workstation to recreate the incident and locate the exact pinch point.
Integrated simulation workflow with OpenSim and Ansys 🛠️
The process began with extracting the exoskeleton's accelerometer logs, which captured the sequence of angular accelerations. This data was imported into OpenSim, where the worker's skeleton and the forces applied by the suit were modeled. In parallel, a 3D scan of the work environment was performed using a depth camera. The environment model was integrated into Ansys to simulate the mechanical interaction between the suit's textile support, modeled in CLO 3D, and a poorly positioned safety bar. The simulation revealed that a misalignment in the exoskeleton's elbow hinge created a pinch point against the line structure, locking the arm's movement precisely at the moment of peak load.
Lessons for workstation and device redesign 📐
The analysis showed that the failure was not in the sensor, but in the design of the exoskeleton's rigid support when interacting with the industrial furniture geometry. The reconstruction in 3ds Max allowed visualization of the critical 42-degree angle where the lock-up occurred. As a result, the suit's shoulder support was redesigned to include a flexible mechanical stop, and the safety bar was relocated 15 centimeters backward. Biomechanical simulation thus consolidates itself as an indispensable tool for validating the safety of assistive systems before their implementation on the plant floor.
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